DevNotes
Developer's Blog Nov 2012 The game mechanics have gone through a revamp, along with a redesign of the card and the new and improved HTML5 Battle Animator. The process of rebalancing the game and how abilities interact with one another has gone through several redesigns and internal playtesting, but we believe that the players would get a better gaming experience as a whole. The comprehensive list can be found - here. The following points are some highlights on key changes: The way abilities activate have been categorized into 3 major types: Activated Ability – Abilities that trigger on their own (e.g. Shock, Regen, Grow) Reactive Ability – Abilities that trigger in reaction to the game (e.g. Block, Retaliate, All) Static Ability – Abilities that carry an effect as long as the card is not dead. (e.g. Vanguard, Command, all) Abilities have also been tagged by classes (denoted by icons on the ability) - Designed to make it easier for players to identify at a glance about ability interactions, in addition to a mouseover tooltip Common and uncommon cards given a big boost! We felt that a lot of the common cards were underutilized in the game. With the rebalance, players will be able to choose from a bigger variety of deck flavors, themes and archetypes. Keyword changes- for the abilities that leave a condition or penalty, it was to better reflect the distinction between the ability that applies it and the condition/penalty that is applied. Other abilities to go through name changes are Cover, and Guard. The new keyword Guard (e.g Guard Dodge for Cover) allows for the possibility of more abilities to be combined with Guard, one of the few Hybrid abilities available to players now. Everything stacks! (or multi-activates for activated abilities). However, attacks which leave debuffs are only applied ONCE per battle with the exception to the rule being Bolt formerly Spit. Untyped/Pure damage - Damage that cannot be defended against, Counter abilities (Counter All, Retaliate, Deflect Arrow, Reflect) all deal Untyped damage. This was designed for a single purpose - to resolve the infinite counter loop that counter abilities invariably creates. Golden Rule: If the description of any ability clashes against a rule, the effect of the ability follows its description. Removal of some abilities from the game: Clan has been streamlined into Commune, which has been designed to be able target All, Faction, or Types Ward - streamlined all other Death abilities to activate upon death and that time only, while Ward persisted throughout whole battle. Resolution was to remove it. Meltable was designed previously for flavor. Card that had it (Craftie) has been updated. Runeblade - Basic attacks can now have attack type, characters that had Runeblade have Melee Magical basic attacks Cripple - We feel that with Terror and Fear revamped, Terror Cripple seems out of place and does fit in context to the keyword. Trap - With the revamp of Ensnare into x, old Trap is removed as a ranged Paralysed is available through Freeze. Late Sept 2012 Here are some highlights of another round of discussion on Abilities Balancing/Rework (please note however that these reworks are a work in progress and will not be finalized until final playtesting is complete) : * Aura naming convention removed *Cover:Ability change to GuardAbility - e.g current Cover to Guard:Dodge, and current Guard to Guard: Health x *Berserk to trigger on all attacks *Command and Commune standardized to work on all faction allies only *Status sub-categorized positive (boon) and negative(condition), to open for other manipulation possibilities **Regen grants Vigor boon, Rally grants Might boon, Envenom inflicts Poison, etc. *Snowball x renamed to Freeze x Early Sept 2012 One of the key problems that we identified early on in Battlecraft was the wording conventions used for the abilities. There was a lack of rules explaining how exactly the card abilities worked or interacted with one another. A good example would be the Mesmer / Reflect a relationship – it was not obvious that Mesmer would be affected by Reflect as the wordings were vague. Another aspect of the problem was the behaviour behind certain abilities, especially those that generated statuses, that were sometimes inconsistent. An example would be Trap (which is a status) that was affected by Counter All whereas Poison Spit / Poison All did not trigger the ability. With these inconsistencies in mind, the development team sat down and discussed on how we could standardise the wordings and behaviour of the card abilities. Once the discussion was completed, we came up with the following format on how abilities would work: *'Activated Ability' - triggers during the character’s turn. Shock and Cleave are examples of activated abilities. *'Triggered Ability' - produces an effect when the stated event, time, or game state is occurs. Reflect and Block are examples of triggered abilities. *'Static Ability' - These abilities stay true while on the battlefield. Auras and a Health bonus are examples of static abilities. Having broken down how abilities worked, we proceeded to break down the effects that the abilities produced. While many abilities produced an immediate effect or attack, statuses were something that was sort of a lingering effect with a slightly different timing in the application of damage and other effects. Adding to the confusion was that statuses and abilities shared names. Poison would be both a status and ability. To clear up the confusion, we started identifying all the statuses and renamed the abilities that shared name with the status. For example: *Poison -> Envenom *Cripple -> Hamstring *Fear -> Frighten This would allow players to know straight away when the ability is referenced or whether it was the status that was referenced. Ability Balancing / Rework Ensnare Since we were reworking some of the rules, we also looked at balancing some abilities. The first ability was Ensnare, where we opted to give the ability a number to limit its power level and prevent it from dominating a purely melee centric deck. The value on Ensnare now corresponds with the opponent’s Power score, meaning that Ensnare 4 could only work on characters with Power 4 or lower. The limitation to what Ensnare could affect however made the ability somewhat ‘useless’ for higher tier play, so we decided to allow Ensnare to stop Ranged Physical and Ranged Magical attacks on top of stopping Melee Physical and Melee Magical attacks. Do note however that this ability can still be quite potent when paired with the Fear status. Cripple Crippled is another heavily redesigned status as we were unhappy with the wordy and often limiting way the condition worked. As such, we simply made the condition reduce the opponent’s attack by a set value and allowed the condition to stack. What this means for players is that they can now have multiple characters with Cripple applying stacking attack penalties to the opponent. As cripple can be applied via range physical and cleave attacks, players could readily apply a -2 to -3 penalty on the first round with the right combination of cards (Nico Swiftblade with Bonecrusher or Grim Crippler with Reaping Scythe). The redesign is much cleaner in terms of its benefits. Envenom Speaking of applying statuses on attacks, we felt that melee was severely underpowered at the moment. As such, we decided to upgrade Envenom (new Poison) to be able to deliver the Poison status via special melee attacks like Cleave and Skirmish. Flaming Flaming is being changed with the application of the Burn status on attack being removed but buffing the retaliatory aspect of the ability. Flaming now triggers when either a Melee Physical or Melee Magical attack damages the character. Energy Drain The other ability we changed was Energy Drain. As it was, the ability was a weak version of Mesmer. To differentiate it and give it more ‘oomph’, we gave a healing component to the ability instead of having it replenish your Energy supply. Trap Trap, which was an ability that had a chance to produce the old Ensnare effect, was done away with altogether. We decided to remove it as balancing Trap was difficult. On one hand, if it didn’t trigger often enough, it was useless. If it triggered too often, it would be overpowered like Ensnare was. Although we could have opted to give Trap a numerical number like Ensnare, we felt that it would then be like a weaker version of Ice Bolt / Snowball. In the end, we opted to simply scrap the ability altogether. Melee and Range, Physical and Magical ''' To help players understand further how the mechanics work, we have clearly defined the attack types with keywords. Most abilities will reference these keywords as the triggering mechanism. This redesign also made it easier to show the damage types that Block, Tough and Resist Magic could mitigate and whether the attack type would be affected by a Counter type ability. Basic attacks, which were previously only Melee Physical attacks, now incorporate all attack types and damage types. This does not change the timing or target of Basic Attacks (i.e. the opposing enemy and range basic attack does not go before a melee basic attack), but it does allow different defense / counter mechanics to trigger off these attacks. ''Aura '' To standardise abilities that gave other characters abilities or effects, we came up with the Aura format. Anything that is listed as an Aura is understood to produce an effect that affects either all characters from the player’s side or all characters from the opponent’s side. Of course, the addition of tags on the Aura ability means that only characters with the tag are affected. ''Cover''''' Guard and Cover were two abilities that affected adjacent allies while not affecting the character with the ability. Since the behaviour was the same, we decided to standardise the naming of these two abilities to Cover (ability / effect). So, Cover is now Cover Dodge while Guard is now Cover Health.